Bill Nye Part II: Recycled Arguments

One of the recycled arguments Nye uses in his defense of murder is the category error that the pro-murder position uses often. The rhetoric consists of using the term “reproductive” rights to describe abortion. That is a category error; killing a baby has nothing to do with a woman’s rights to conceive a child. If Christians were holding up signs that said, “A Woman Should Need Written Permission From The Government in Order To Get Pregnant!”, then reproductive rights would be precisely the issue. But it’s not the issue in the abortion debate.

Since Nye felt it so important to inform us on the process of fertilization, the favor will be returned by informing Nye what it means to “reproduce.” The good news is, a degree in microbiology, or in his case, mechanical engineering, is not needed. A simple online dictionary will do the trick:Reproduction:

1) The action or process of making a copy of something.

2) The production of offspring by a sexual or asexual process

Synonyms include: breeding and procreation. Synonyms do not include: murder, killing a child, destroying offspring. Notice what is absent from that definition:

Reproduction: destroying offspring formed during the process of reproduction.

Someone tell the pro-murder movement to never use the word they are defining in the definition. Calling abortion reproductive rights is like someone burning historic paintings in a famous museum and claiming they have the right to create art in a free country. Burning a painting is not creating art; it’s destroying art. Burning a painting is not reproducing art, it’s destroying art that has already been produced. Thus, when Nye says,

“When it comes to women’s rights with their respect to reproduction, I think you should leave it to women”

he is committing an egregious fallacy. That has nothing to do whatsoever with abortion or with anti-abortion arguments. Women have the right to reproduce. The abortion debate is about what women have the right to do after they exercise their right to reproduce. Murdering the living, human product of their reproduction ought not to be a right, and that goes for all circumstances, including rape. Rape is not an exception and it never will be until the following question can be answered:

What moral standard allows the punishment of children for parental crimes?

In other words, if a young boy’s dad comes home drunk and beats his wife, who should be thrown in jail? The dad or the boy?If you answered, “the boy” you just might be pro-abortion. If you answered “both” you just might be pro-abortion. You may even be Bill Nye. No baby deserves to die for a crime he or she didn’t commit. No reader of this blog deserves to die for a crime they didn’t commit, and no person at all deserves to die for a crime they didn’t commit. Thus, Nye’s statement that

“She has rights over this, especially if she doesn’t like the guy who got her pregnant”

is absurd. Notice also the inability to provide a logical foundation for when those rights end. If a man rapes a woman, and she wants the baby, but five years after the child begins to grow and develop and look so much like her attacker and brings back all those painful memories, does she still have rights to kill that child? I mean, it’s her body right? She doesn’t like the father, thus shouldn’t she have rights over that? One more thing on rape is needed before concluding: the rape and incest argument actually commits the fallacy of a Red Herring. It is a distraction. This can be demonstrated because no pro-murder person who does want to kill babies for the crimes of their fathers would be willing to sign a bill that outlawed abortion for all cases but rape and incest. I would sign that bill. I would not sign it because it’s good, but because it would save lives. After signing it, I would immediately begin a campaign to change the law to outlaw all abortions. However, so few of abortions are rape cases (some figures suggest less than 1%) I would praise the Lord for that proposal and I would sign it. I would love to outlaw 99% of abortions. But they wouldn’t. Bill wouldn’t, and that’s exactly the point.